At a loss at what to see in a theater this weekend... Harry says take a DRIVE!!!

I absolutely loathe the fact that I wasn't ahead of the curve on DRIVE. I've been excited about it since the moment it was announced. Refn's last film, BRONSON played like a revelation when I saw it - and Refn's PUSHER trilogy is not to be missed. The worst thing about going to Toronto for the premiere of my first film as producer was missing the press screening for DRIVE.

When I came back to Austin, I was in prep mode for FANTASTIC FEST and never did have an afternoon or late evening open till just a day or two ago when I finally sat down to catch DRIVE. Now this is a fucking movie.

Remember vintage Michael Mann? You know films like THE THIEF or FRENCH CONNECTION... where the vibe of a scene isn't necessarily REAL - but cool as fuck? Refn demonstrates a masterful control over how to bring a vibe to life. DRIVE is a film about a Hollywood stunt car driver played by Ryan Gosling - he's absolutely eerie perfect. We don't know anything about where he comes from, his back story. All we know is what we see. He's a Hollywood Stuntdriver and Getaway Car Driver... and he wears a badass jacket with a scorpion logo that feels old and worn... a jacket he wears like it has a story.

Refn does an amazing thing with a film that leaves a lot to its audience. He trusts in the actors and their ability to absolutely captivate. Which is easy when you have actors like Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman, Christina Hendricks and Bryan Cranston commanding the screen.

Let's take for example the unrequited love story at the center of the film... Refn has Ryan Gosling as a nameless driver... we meet him and we see that he's a consummate smart professional part-time bad guy, but we also see that he's an incredible driver professionally for Hollywood. And he meets this awesome seemingly single girl named Irene, played by the exquisitely talented Carey Mulligan. He finds out that the father of the child is in prison... so he proceeds with pursuing her. There's definitely chemistry there. When Irene's husband gets out of prison seemingly overnight... Our mysterious Driver becomes her confidant and a family friend. You get the idea that Gosling not only loves her, but truly wants what's best for her. So he doesn't get all adversarial with her husband, he tries to help him out of a rather shady shakedown - the classic, 1 last job, scenario. I love that Irene is not in on what is going on. That she's allowed to be innocent. I love when that innocence gets lost. It is a scene of such raw power and magnificence that it pretty much beats every other single scene I've seen in any film this year. It's "The Elevator scene" and holy shit dude. Holy shit.

Ryan Gosling has been the next big thing for a bit now. This will be his breakout role. Now, I know... I know... it's only made like $30 million at the Box Office and sure that's double its budget, and if this were a grotesque mega-super-Hollywood budget film, that would mean it would have made $400 million in its first 3 weeks... But this is a smaller film. A film filled with emotion and style and thought and power and sensuality and soul and explosions of violence and utterly fucked situations that it hurts and scars because you CARE ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THESE GREAT CHARACTERS THAT YOU LOVE!

I mean. It just works. Why does it work? What makes it so fucking great? It's the writing, the acting, the directing... music by Cliff Martinez that just sizzles... this is the score of the year so far. And the songs just fucking rock. Newton Thomas Sigel's photography is so cool. So cool. This movie looks so cool. Then there's just the way everything looks in the film - the sets and costumes and the look of the film - created by Beth Mickle, Christopher Tandon and Lisa Sessions and Erin Benach. Their work is just note perfect. So perfect.

But the most obvious wow from this film are the performances and characters. Ron Perlman... this is one of those performances in a small film by him, that goes right alongside CITY OF LOST CHILDREN, CRONOS, NAME OF THE ROSE and THE LAST SUPPER - as his very best work. He's not the biggest part, but his presence drives a lot of the film. Because he is who he is in this universe, the movie becomes the movie it becomes. Then you have Albert Brooks... and goddamn him, when Albert Brooks shows up to show up, he's fucking awesome! Wow. He's just as great as he gets here. Carey Mulligan - she's as great as she is in NEVER LET ME GO or AN EDUCATION. Can't wait to see her Daisy Buchanan! Bryan Cranston reminds me of Adam Roarke's Deke Sommers from DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY or Ben Johnson's Buck Roan in JUNIOR BONNER. He's the wounded soul of the movie. Love him.

I'm so glad I saved writing this for after I finally got to write about that fucking THING prequel. This is a movie that gives you faith in the artform. It's so satisfying at every level - and it makes me happy as hell to just get to see a movie like this in a theater. This film has a racing pulse... it reminds you of the great gritty noirs and it follows those rules. Had the film been shot in the fifties, it would've starred a young Burt Lancaster. Those films were always B movies that didn't break the Box Office in half. But they're the movies we write about 50 & 60 years later as driving up our pulse and loving the very emulsion of cinema itself.

DRIVE is that kind of movie! A film that you get drunk in love with and lock yourself up with for a week of constant indulgence once it comes out. It's a movie that makes you want to live. I love those films.

Oh wow...longlivethenewflesh is 100% correct. I just did some snooping around the tubes and found out that on the workprint/pirate version, the score is credited to Angelo Badalamenti incorrectly. The Social Network score also appears in places.
Wow. Way to support good films while they're in theaters. Unreal.

There is so much cool in this movie I'm surprised theaters haven't spontaneously combusted!
Also, it was the first time in years that as I left the theater people were pumped about the violence in the film, not because it was over the top, but because it was realistically and judiciously applied.
The violence is, as far as I can recall, all survival based, primal and necessary.
Goddamn, why isn't this on Blu-Ray right the fuck now!

it's really weird, i too saw Badalamenti in the opening credits, yet the score didn't sound anything like one of his. and sure enough, the soundtrack in stores has martinez's name on it... wtf happened there?

Can we get a redo on this review? The score? The filmography of Refn? You are implying that Mann directed French connection. Have you not seen Valhalla Rising?!?
Just undo and we will go about our business.

Anybody who has been with this site for any length of time knows that often the reviewers can and do view and review pirated material. That one season of 24 where the first 4 hours got pirated and it was reviewed comes to mind.
Its just surprising that Harry got caught with his pants down on this one. First rule of reviewing pirated material, always name-check off the imdb source. Just Hilarious.

watching the pirated version?? Dude, I just had to have a conversation with my kids last weekend about it being better to admit when you fuck up rather than trying to cover shit with a lie. Damn... that's some cold shit. Bryan Cox would be ashamed of you!

And for the first time, I not only get a first post, but I also get to help publicly embarrass Harry for pirating a film, writing a hack review, and participate in an extension of the "Harry and His Dad In-Joke" meme.
This is a great day.

And this theater typically only gets non-blockbuster films weeks or even months after they've opened in the bigger markets. Harry, I'm not one of those who typically knocks you, but WTF is going on? This review is about a month late. I don't think "Drive" is still playing at more than a handful of theaters.

You might as well bragged about waking up this morning and taking a shit.
Embarrassing Harry about a hack review is a regular as a sunset.
I expected more from Harry for such an excellent film but it was a false dawn.

Thanks guys. It's at times like these I like to think back on Brian Cox's motivational speech in David Cronenberg's great film, Revenge of the Nerds. His performance as Rocky is incredible. It's really the score by Angela Badalamenti that reminds us how to live, though.

That was Zack Snyder's most recent film before 300, wasn't it?
Or was it Scorsese.......
No, wait! That was the one with the high school swim team that single-handedly repelled the Mongol invasion of New Amsterdam, right?

of REVENGE OF THE NERDS, for the utterly horrific version of Booger alone.
But let us never take our eyes off the prize.....12-SIDED DIE HARD: John McClane is forced to enter the seedy underworld of role-playing games to rescue his son from the nefarious clutches of a 12th-level Cleric with double hit-points.
Starring Brian Cox as the Rakshasa, and Chloe Moretz as Sylvia Plath.

.... and damn, I thought it was a dull and pretentious slog. It started okay, but during the middle section on the boat in the fog, the film ground to a mind-numbing halt. Mads Mikkelson played a great badass in it, no doubt, but I could barely stay awake.</p>
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Then again, I also thought Bronson was a dull and pretentious slog as well, punctuated by hard violence and a great central performance.</p>
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So, I find myself questioning Nicholas Winding Refn as the much heralded next big thing. I must ask: is Drive as pretentious as its predecessors? A dull film with some brief moments of violence and a good central performance? Because, if so, I'll pass.

I'm still impressed that this small yet ambitious film was shown in a fairly large number of theaters when it was in wide release. It seemed to be playing at every theater in my general area. Although I had really wanted to see it for months, I chose not to see it opening weekend because of the use of "ultra-violence" in many critic and user reviews. I don't know anyone that would want to see an "ultra-violent" movie, and so I waited a week or two and then saw it by myself at a time when there were only a few others in the theater. I am so glad I saw it in the theater. The music (and sound effects), suspense, and great lighting in the movie made it a special movie theater going experience. The violence really wasn't too bad for me because what is shown really isn't that bad...but the first time watching the movie it gives your brain jolts of surprise/shock thinking the violence will be worse than it really is.

I usually like your posts, so I won't launch into a profanity-laden, capslock'd tirade at you for impugning my tastes without knowing me.</p>
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That said... don't be that guy. You know, the guy for whom if you don't engage with some worthy but pretentious film, makes the binary assumption that you're a Van Helsing lover.</p>
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As I said, I think both Bronson and Valhalla Rising had great central performances, but I found them to be almost unbearably pretentious. Seriously, that Third Part in Valhalla Rising (Men of God) felt as inert as the boat that held the crusaders. Also, One-Eye's visions shitted me... you get 10 minutes of nothing happening, then.... BAM! Sudden loud noise and a red-filtered Lynchian vision.</p>
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Now, if Valhalla Rising had Frankenstein doing Tarzan swings, then maybe I could have gotten behind it more. Does Drive have Frankenstein doing Tarzan swings?

Other then that, I agree with this review fully. Thief is exactly the movie Drive felt like. Ryan Gosling was excellent in this movie. I didn't think much of him until Drive. Great performance using mainly expression and not words.

This Drive is pretentious drivel. Refn dropped the ball on this. I watch anything Refn makes but this just plain sucked. I wanted to believe the hype but when I finally saw it it was so disappointed. This isn't the first time something on AICN gets hyped and is utter shit.

I'm still blown away morons out there thought this would be like Fast and Furious. Like that bitch who is suing the studio for false advertising. Someone should sue her for using oxygen. This movie ruled. I saw it like three weeks ago though so it's weird reading a review for it now.

will you delete this review because you got caught pirating a movie and not fact checking at all...
just like that photo you swore was real of henry cavill and amy adams?
http://www.cinefools.com/images/uploaded/20116/Fake-Man-Of-Steel-550x409.jpg
you can do whatever you want, man, but have some integrity. people would respect you more, if you owned up to your mistakes, because you DO earn them, my man. you don't fact check, you don't check your writing, you just rant emotionally.
like I said, do what you want, my man, but at least be real and honest. don't be a worm, dude.

You are spot on about Bronson. Good Tom Hardy performance but thats it really.<p>
Refn was certainly fluked it with Drive but as flukes go its one of the best i've seen.<P>
Dont let Refn's previous movies put you off, Drive is a fantastic movie , Its plays like the classic Mann, Cronenberg, Carpenter movies of the 80's. Best movie i've seen I years and no exaggeration. See it in on the big screen if you still can, you wont regret it.
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BTW have you seen Warrior yet? Its a much more satisfying experiance. Hardy gives another great performance and the rest of movie is also great. Unlike Bronson where most of the movie besides Hardy was just okay at best.<p>
Im actually more exited to see how Hardy gets on in Batman more than Ledger after seeing how well he did in Warrior/Tinker Tailor/Bronson.But fear Nolan will make shite of him,Hope im wrong.

Anyone remember the Attack of the Clones review? I'm sure he's embarrassed, but probably not that embarrassed to have been caught. He should be more embarrassed to so woefully behind on this, I mean if you're just going to be watching the flick on your laptop you really don't have a reason to be several months behind everyone else.

http://bit.ly/nJO2di
I couldn't believe Harry actually changed a *sizzling* soundtrack review from Badalamenti to Martinez after being busted in the TB. But, yo ho, the original write-up is still in Yahoo's web cache.
*I mean. It just works. Why does it work? What makes it so fucking great? It's the writing, the acting, the directing... music by Angela Badalamenti that just sizzles.*
Now it's *music by Cliff Martinez that just sizzles.*.
I don't care if he downloaded the Martinez DRIVE score off iTunes or wherever later as a mea culpa, you would think he would have just pulled the soundtrack mention altogether having not heard it with the movie. How embarrassing.

....goes down when Harry misses the curve on something like Driver. When I saw it in the theater (when it opened btw) I loved all the whispered "holy shit"s and "holy fuck"s during a few of the scenes. When Albert Brooks says to Cranston in the garage: "it's done, don't fight it", that was one of those scenes. Awesome movie

He writes an almost comprehensible (for him) rave review for a genuinely excellent film(instead of the usual crap he jizzes over) only to be caught out as an evil pirate who will bring the film industry to its knees.

Not completely sold on Refn yet. Valhalla Rising was interesting and "arty", but his scenes (hell, his every shot) seem to go on too long. Haven't checked out his other stuff. I want Albert Brooks nominated for Supporting Actor!

Like that's all he does? He's a fucking grease monkey? That were he probably makes most of his money. He maybe stunt drives once every six months? Does getaway jobs twice a year? But works at an automobile repair shop day in day out. Why was that so hard for reviewers to explain? <br>
Also why the fuck does Cranstand need so many fucking gigs? The stuntcar shit was such a worthless plot point that went nowhere and souly existed just so reviewers could talk about HOW COOL it was and how THAT WAS HIS FUCKING JOB.

Harry, I love your site, man, but you are hitting new lows with this write up. There is nothing "unrequited" about the love story. Go to school. The relationship is unconsummated, yes, but unrequited? Not even close.
By the way, glad you dug it, Drive is the best film of the year thus far.

This film was enjoyable and wonderfully stylized but not nearly as incredible as everyone praises it to be.
The story had a strange pulse that took away from the gravitas needed for the films violence to be 100% effective.
If the box office wasn't a joke in general these days then Drive would've gotten more good than great reviews.

How can you totally wimp out on the violence with regard to the Big Bads at the end after you've set the bar with the elevator head stomping scene?
Driver pushes Hellboy's car over the cliff. Awesome.
But, then from the distance we see Hellboy walk to the ocean and Driver follow him and kind of push him into the water. No closeup of him drowning the man who tried to kill the love of his life nor any kind of dramatic life and death struggle.
Just Meh.
And then the showdown with Albert Brooks is even more anticlimactic. The mind boggles at how awesome this knife fight showdown could of been if we actually got to see it or even how dramatic it could have been if all we saw was the extreme closeups of the two mens faces in the midst of their death match.
But all we got was a poorly framed shadow and a puddle of blood on the asphalt.
Again. Meh-Meh.
The only thing I can think is that Refn was going for an anticlimactic, anti-violence payoff effect similar to No Country for Old Men.
The only problem with that? The Coen brothers already did it! And better!
Plus, the entire theme of No Country was about violence in movies, culture, society.
Not so with Drive. At all! Drive is at its core a classic grindhouse revenge story. And Refn really needed to deliver on his promise of violence as well as the tension he built up the entire film and...
... instead he dropped the ball. Or in this case, the knife.

Sadly, i only saw this review for the first time today, after it was corrected. But man, thanks to the references from you guys above, i'm just having the time of my life laughing at Harry's goofs from this review. This is pure comedy gold.

Is correct. the movie falls in love with itself way too much. Too many time killing shots of nothing. Driver is elevated into this mythical being instead of being a bad-ass, tough bastard out to kick evil or in this case, guys worse evil than him.
Albert Brooks should have had has nuts cut off for stabbing the Driver who suddenly becomes not so tough....
And Bryan Cranston was not used enough.

Driver should have drowned Hellboy without mercy and apology, get in their and dunk him...
The fight with Brooks should have ended with Al dead eating his gonads, not some crappy framed sort of, fistacuffs.
At that point in hte story, Driver should have been one pissed off mother and nothing was going to stand in his way.

It really surprises me just how callous and careless the writers and editors are here in regards to the multiple mistakes found in their stories. Between horrible writing and grammar to stupid misspellings and gross inaccuracies (Refn's last film being Bronson, Brian Cox in Alien), it seems you guys either just A) don't care or B) don't see a problem with it.
Either option is pretty pathetic.
Do better. You can. Its easy: its called proofreading. Take some pride in what you make.
The fact that you don't seem to care to do better speaks volumes.

It wasn't the only thing, but it did elevate it. I liked a lot about this; albert Brooks being a racist pig, Ron Perlman a dumb hitman, but the lame ass shots of staring, walking in the grocery store aisles...pretentious dickslap...and the before mentioned cop-out ending.
He is a driver, therefore I call him Driver...
Not to forget that awful ear rape music....

Thanks. Greatly appreciated.
A side, and more serious note: I try to give Harry the benefit of the doubt, and often, I just apply the same amount of apathy to his reviews and his site as he does, but this review was just insanely bad; it was the most lazily written piece of garbage I have ever seen. It boggles my mind that someone would be so lazy as to not even proofread, to not even check IMDB to make sure he hasn't made a fool out of himself by crediting the wrong people, especially given what he's watching is a torrented work print. It's incredibly disrespectful that Harry would post such a pathetic review, absolutely chock full of easily correctable errors. It's amazing that he would just redact the incriminating Angela Badalamenti foolishness and still stand by his statement that it's one of the scores of the year; it is that, most definitely, but he hasn't even heard the real score. How can he post that opinion and stand behind it?
It's time for Brian Cox's greatest role: to take over this site, given Harry doesn't care anymore.

I just think the way he introduced it after taking about a Mann vibe and then giving one example as a Mann film (The Thief which is actually just called Thief like The Ali is actually called Ali or The Miami Vice is actually called Miami Vice..etc.) was just poor writing.

Is like complaining about Wal-Mart killing small business while driving 20 miles out of your way to shop at Wal-Mart.
There will never be a reason for the site to improve if you keep supporting it with your page views.

Some funny posts and some measured assessments of Drive which I liked a lot but not as much as I hoped I would.
I think the film succeeds because of the Refn, although some of his stylistic choice are to the detriment of the film. The long gazes were a bit much, could have toned down that shit and it would have worked just as well and not have felt like parody.0
The soundtrack puzzled me (not the score) I didn't really get the point of the 80s vibe. When I saw the film I thought the songs grated and although I have since grown to really like them I'm still not sure they don't do the movie a disservice.
Agree with Chopper about the ending, as much as I appreciate the echewing of the typical hollywood blueprint for such a tale, the film could have used a bit more honesty about what it is.
For me the rest of the film didnt really match up to the opening which really was fantastic.

I expressed my thoughts in the 10 or 11 "Drive" talkbacks that were on this site when the film came out a month ago. At this point, I'd just be spewing rhetoric. If "Drive" were a woman I'd fuck it, marry it, and buy it a mini-van.
I'm being the Driver for Halloween. We have a little haunted house set-up at work and I'm bringing my niece and nephew, and I need to dress up. Tossed around some ideas like Oh Dae Su from "Oldboy," but then I saw "Drive" and that clinched it. I have the aviators, the gloves, the hammer and the toothpick... I've got 2 more weeks to track down as close a replication as possible of that KICK ASS jacket.

Who thought the Driver came off as a little bit autistic for most of the movie. Although I felt the same way about Dwayne Johnson in Faster, so maybe I just have a thing against characters credited as "Driver."

I wondered that at times, too. He was either emotionally disconnected to the point of being a completely opaque human being... or a little bit slow.
I'm assuming its the former, and he's not really mentally challenged, because the Driver shares a lot of qualities with the leads from some of Refn's earlier films like the "Pusher" films and "Valhalla Rising." Hell, he seems like he could be a descendant of One Eye from 'Valhalla.'

I will defer to your wisdom on this one, as I haven't seen any of the director's other films. It definitely became more clear later on in the movie anyways that he was more sociopath than having some kind of mental handicap. I probably need to watch the movie again because it bothered me a little bit when I watched it the first time, possibly lowering my opinion of the movie.

Good call on Driver seeming like a descendant of One Eye. I think the distance he keeps and his emotional disconnect is just a learned response, to protect himself and anyone around him. Even Cranston's character doesn't really know him. If anyone is a little slow in the film, it's Cranston's character.

I saw it the week it came out. I was hopeful because I love the idea and I like Gosling. Unfortunately, I think someone (the director) really screwed this up. Too many long silences with vacuous expressions. I thought I'd kill myself when the driver and the girl just stared at each other. A good director and actors can get the tension (sexual and otherwise) in a ten-second pan; this went on for WAY too long, and there were far too many of them.
Finally (SPOILER ALERT), once all the bad guys are dead, the driver just leaves the money sitting there. The East Coast mob has no idea where it is; he & the girl are free and clear, but he leaves it open and fluttering for anyone to pick up instead of... well, ANYthing else.
Disappointing, boring, unexciting at all. The only thing of interest was the director's efforts to give you good impact shots, like shotguns to the face.

If you thought the driver gave a single fuck about the money then you completely missed the point of the character and the movie too.
Refn's direction is the very thing which elevates this movie from the norm. The same script would have been a complete hackfest in the hands of, say, Tony Scott.

The film was initially set up as a Neil Marshall vehicle(hehe, puns) with Hugh Jackman starring. Don't get me wrong, I really, really like Neil Marshall. But I get the feeling that the film would've ultimately been a vanilla car-chase-laden thriller with heavy emphasis on the leading man qualities of Jackman.
Refn and Gosling make "Drive" a one-of-a-kind beast. Take either one of them away(Refn in particular), and the film is a shell of itself. Personally, I loved every iota of creative juice those two brought to the film... Gosling stoic, against-the-grain performance; Refn's oddball casting; Refn's over-glorifying of the romance, in spite of every single other thing going on in the movie; the terrifically unassuming soundtrack, etc etc etc.
I don't usually subscribe to extreme filmic hyperbole, but "Drive" just pushed every single one of my buttons in the right way. I would usually say something along the lines of, "I recommend this movie to everyone," but honestly... I know better. I wouldn't even recommend this movie to most of my CLOSE FRIENDS. Its a very unique piece of cinema, and its most definitely not for everyone.

You really know nothing about movies do you? Not a fucking thing. You are a total fraud.
How does it feel to know that you created a great website and then fucked it over totally with your inept writing, your obvious propensity to give good reviews to crap movies in exchange of studio gifts and your obviously miniscule knowledge of film?

it's an embarrassment really. The only reason I continue to come here is to chop it up with guys like kilik, vader, choppah, etc...
the craft on display from some of the writing on this site is nothing short of disastrous. Harry's reviews are like a child's scribbling on a napkin at Applebee's...the guy doesn't even proof read or spell check...and if he does, the fact that he STILL releases a messy piece of writing speaks volumes about him and this embarrassment of a site.
How, for instance (and I know I keep bringing this up, but it's important), does a movie website that is supposed to be the go-to for cool movie news (hence the title of the site) neglect to miss out on reporting Darren Aronofsky's Noah dream project finally getting the greenlight??? Not one single mention, not one single blurb.
They reported up the ass on The Fountain and it's tortured journey to the screen. But they can't even be bothered to report on Noah? How many people run this site? Not one of these people got wind of the news, which was reported on ALMOST EVERY OTHER MOVIE SITE, and thought, "hey probably relevant to our site", and reported it?
Harry's writing continues to devolve like Benjamin Button, and this site never seems to give a shit about the quality of the very tool they use to communicate to their readers?

It is a polarizing movie. People sem to either love it or hate it, but it definitely makes no apologies, it just is what it is. I mean...when was the last time you went to a movie that was good for a date...wherein people are getting their heads blown the fuck apart?
It was a dream-like movie, like Valhalla, which I also love...but I know those movies, and Refn, are a specific taste. The CLIFF MARTINEZ score, for example? A perfect fit, IMO, went to see Contagion the week after and loved that score too...guess what? same guy! Hmm...reminded me of that Solaris score I really dug..same guy again?
But I get that it's not for everyone.
It has elements of the weird to it..anyone notice that towards the end, when he's wearing the mask, and he's looking into the club where Boss Hellboy is at...his mask is no longer a mask, but it's become his actual FACE, the eyeholes are no longer there, but are now a part of his skin! I really dig weird shit like that, where not everything is laid out neatly.
Like him or hate him, Refn has brought something NEW to the table, and by that I mean start to look for the copycat stylists, cause they'll start. And I expect Refn's next job to have a substantial budget.
Long live the new Flesh. I mean ideas.

I come here for the talkbacks and the community experience. And guys like Quint and Beaks, who still feel like they're really trying.
But for actual movie "news" I go to sites like SlashFilm and HitFix, sadly.

The character is called Driver. The name of the movie is called DRIVE. It means the movie is not named after the protagonist, though he takes center stage for most of it. Go with the flow, buddy.
Might have you even consider the fact that the reason you dislike the moviel all those slow stuff, is what makes this movie set itself apart and be it's own thing? Since when that's a bad thing? In this era where movies are made to resemble one another, where all seems to heartless and manufactured by formula, the things that makes Drive what it is should be celebrated, not dismissed.
Perhaps a second or third viewing of this movie might make your heart grow founder of it? It's not unknown for such thing to happen. It did to me with 2001, and nowdays i love that movie to death, i love it like the blood that runs on my veins.

I feel your hurt, friend.
My biggest complain about Harry is not so much his writing and intellectual sloppiness, but that he has became so subservient to Holywood's wishes. And how he is such a strong supporter of some of the most untalented hacks in The Town. That's the thing that hurts me the most about this site.
And yet, i keep returning here because, despiste all that, i still belive in the very core idea behind this place, the notion that this is a place by geeks for geeks.

its lost its way a number of years ago,i dont partake in many of the talkbacks here but it seems like the community makes the website and the humour between the people who post here is what brings me back,for actual real journalism and someone who has a voice worth listening to you've only got to go to hitfix really just look at the recent review of The Thing
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/motion-captured/posts/review-irritating-prequel-to-the-thing-gets-the-big-choices-wrong
and compare it to harrys and youl understand,and for breaking news ya have deadline and collider days ahead of AICN for breaking news,i thought this was the year that an overhaul was going to happen to bring the site forward but no its prob gone backwards. I think harry might be under staffed here to do this thing(A review of a film 3 weeks after its release is sucide for any other website especially where there was so much buzz before hand) maybe he should stick to a weekly podcast of his views and exclusive news and maybe bring in some of his famous friends for there views, I always come back cause i love the talkback stuff with Herc in the tv section, and capone opinions are always worth a few mins of my day,i know i know another rant but we only complain because we know this site could be so much more

Every Tom, Dick and Harry can make the usual Holywood action movie. This movie would had not been any different had it been handled by such types. That Refn made it and as everybody says it feels different and weirdly is already proof that Refn did the right thing.
That the right thing is not appealing to everybody is another matter.

Not to bow to the absurd, but the point is that sites which live by ad dollars generate those dollars based on the number of visitors and number of page views. So long as you contribute to those numbers, you are are perpetuating the site's practices. Only when a site drops in those categories, and its revenue decreases correspondingly, does it realize the need to change.
Hence my admonition. So if you want to effect change, do so not by bitching, but by leaving.
And please, spare me any trollish response. I won't be dragged into it.

Didn't get your testosterone pumping, asimovlives? Did you go out afterwards to a club and pick up some Portugese woman and bring her home to your place, driving really fast, and then peel off all her clothes and seat her at the edge of your bed while gently inching your penis into her vagina, with both of you gasping at that moment, perhaps saying something in Portugese like "Oh God", and then begin humping her until you squirted semen out of your penis? <p>
Well....did you?

I said don't bother with a trollish response. That doesn't preclude other types of responses.
As for my "advise," I wasn't the one complaining about the site to begin with, just pointing out that the endless complaining here doesn't actually contribute.

Sounds like a complain to me, friend. Tumato, tomato.
As for trollish, my experience with internat talk is that, despiste the fact that there is a very specific definition of what troll be havior is, few people actually use it to consider what is trolish behavior form others. Basically, 90% of the people in sites like this call trolls to people who just disagree with them. So, in that regard, i'm at a loss what you would consider a trollish response.

I like the big guy and his enthusiasm.
But I've come to think that Harry doesn't review a movie. He typically reviews what he takes to be the motivations behind it. If he thinks the makers were coming from a place of laudable ambition and motivation, he praises the movie. Even if the execution was weak. Me, I want to know if the execution was weak. I want to see that acknowledged in the review. There are lots of movies I wanted to be good that weren't. Often I get the feeling that Harry is giving a grade for how much he wanted to like the movie, not the movie itself.

I can see what you are saying with the disappointment of a nonviolent, anticlimactic showdown at the end but I disagree with it being a wimp out. The elevator scene was not setting the bar for the rest of the movie, that was it, that was the real climax for the driver. Everything he was fighting for was lost in that elevator. The innocence that he so dearly adored about Carey Mulligans character (can't remember her character name now) was lost as soon as he exposed her to th violence of the world and situation they were in. He knew it and it was shown to us from his POV as the elevator door closed between them, separating them as the truly different people they were. He only continued on after that because he was the scorpion and he had to, (hence the story of the scorpion and the frog and, of course, his jacket) it was in his nature. Graphic violence after that point would have been gratuitous and, in my opinion, more forgetful. The satisfying violence was already given to us and the final showdown was merely the aftermath of a battle that had already been won. At that point, Albert Brooks was only a shadow, or a silhouette, from the blinding flash of a bomb that already exploded. We didn't need to see his detailed death because he was just the last, fading memory of the story that had already been completed by the driver.
I thought it was a bad ass ending to a bad ass movie.

Jeez. It had moments that were brilliant but my God the movie was slow and kind of bordered on stupid at points. I just think it could have expanded a bit and had a few hundred less scene's of people just looking at each other and doing nothing....i mean nothing. I know thats "artistic and clever" and for saying it's not i will be called a moron that just wanted more "xplosion's and titties"but i ain't Bay. I just think this site is going overboard pushing shit films these days

I've seen Refn's other films. But after seeing the trailer I was sort of expecting something different. Nope. Same slowww pace for the first half of the film. Which is o.k. I guess it was captivating enough. After the opening 15 minute heist/chase scene which was the very best part of the entire movie, was stunningly brilliant, everything goes back into idle and we enter some kind of Pretty in Pink movie. This goes on for 45 minutes? Then it turns into a gangster/heist gone wrong film.
What I'm getting at is this movie is a bit uneven and imperfect. I enjoyed it a lot and want to see it again but if I were the editor I would ask Refn if he could please speed things up just a little in the first 1/2. The script/story/characters just aren't compelling enough to justify such languid scenes.
But there's times that Refn's style works great. At the end of the film when Gosling is laying in his car seat and there is a loooooooong shot focusing on his face. That's good shit.
This is his best movie if you ask me.
I think the head bashing scene in the elevator was a bit over the top. I think I 'get' the reason for it but c'mon, what happened, he just completely lost it? Because that surely isn't going to impress his new girlfriend. Maybe that's why he's single.
Then there's the end. Spoilers. What I took away from the end was that the driver ditched the girl and is never going to see her again. Is that what happened? Because I think that ending fucking BLOWS. Seriously the 16 Candles first 1/2 of the movie he's romancing her then he just gives up? I don't really see a good enough reason for that ending.

I've seen many people criticize his performance or his character or whatever calling him autistic or he has downs syndrome or something lol.
I kinda agree. I don't think Refn got the most out of his performance. There is a failure there to convey what they were going for. Like the scenes where he says absolutely nothing. Is he retarded? There are moments like that in real life but I think he needed more dialogue, and to show a little more emotion in his delivery. Having him act like a strange weirdo doesn't do much to buy sympathy.

And you wrote a badass post. If you ever heard of me, you will know i'm not easily impressed. Your post impressed the hell out of me. I cannot watch this movie and not take your ideas and opinion about it into consideration. Badass, dude!
Can't wait to read more stuff from you.

I'm sorry, friend, but you are the last person to critcise a more off-beat, therefore properly good movie. You are more of the JJ Abrams and Michael Bay movie type of person. You are not there yet. Keep trying, though. Practice make perfect. Eventually you will watch a movie that will blow your mind and make you realise what infantille pieces of shit the movies you have been so enamorate about, the Bay and Brams bullshits. And then your eyes will finally be open. Too bad DRIVE didn't do the trick for you. This year there were two movies relased which could had been the type of movie that would had blown your mind, TREE OF LIFE and DRIVE,and none of them worked. Well, there's still TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY this year. And if that doesn't do the trick either... keep trying.
Eventually you will learn what proper real cinema is all about. I believe that will happen to you. I believe in you.

I liked the movie, but what I didn't like were the dishonest things about it, the lack of truth and following it to the end.
Why go through all the trouble he went through and NOT take the money? It kind backs up the claim Driver was a retard or something. I kid, but still.
I'm not the only one to point this out.
Why put a character through such turmoil and not be rewarded for something? Missing the point, I guess, but if thats the case, the point sucks. He should have killed the dude on the beach, no mercy, no apologies and grabbed the money and ran off with the hottie.
Overall, though, I dig it. Great to see Albert Brooks among the living and being a cock to boot- same for Ron Perlman.
I can even over look the ending because i dug the rest of it. BUT what I didn't like are the lame ass shots of staring into space for no good reason- the waste of time shots in the supermarket. I have artsy crap shots like that for the sake of earning some lame ass Indie street cred. It comes off douchey and pretentious and the film suffers without a fast forward button nearby. I don't mind a movie taking its time, just don't bore me and insult with trying too hard to be "artsy" and "hip" and get a postive write-up from Elvis Mitchell.
I still hate that terrible, intrusive music. My suggestion would have been a nice subtle score, a song when the action takes hold.
As for Gosling, great, awesome...he gets better every day. I could see him as Daredevil...
A film similar to this in spirit that I enjoyed much more was Faster with The Rock. Sure, it's more mainstream and polished, but it stuck to its intentions and didn't sell out at the end.
And I too LOVE 2001.

DITO! That's what I'm saying.
-"I just think it could have expanded a bit and had a few hundred less scene's of people just looking at each other and doing nothing....i mean nothing. I know thats "artistic and clever" and for saying it's not i will be called a moron that just wanted more "xplosion's and titties"but i ain't Bay. I just think this site is going overboard pushing shit films these days " -
WHY waste time on shots like that? Add some dialoge, expand a scene, get a different editor, but doing nothing is so dumb.

I had that exact discussion with a friend I saw the movie with, and he didn't like the ending for that reason, either. I look at it this way, though: Since Gosling is essentially a loner...he doesn't even end up with the woman and kid at the end (probably because he knows trouble tends to follow him and he loves them too much to do that to him)...so spending all his time alone, it's very important to him that he be able to live with himself. When he suggested to the girl that she take the money, she slapped him in disgust. That money is now blood money, and if not for that money, her husband might still be alive. So if he took that money, it would be like he's taking her disgust with him...and he loves her too much to do that. So he leaves it. <p>
The money is inconsequential to him because he most likely knows there will be other jobs/heists. That's who he is, and he knows that won't change. He accepts it.

Could it be just that the Driver is not at all motivated by money at all? I know this is an alien concept for many, but there are people who do things not for money but other reasons. In real life too. The money being just an excuse, the macguffin, not the real reason behind his actions.
And given the alternative interpretations of the ending, including that he's not already on this earth, the money would be irrelevant, wouldn't it? Dropping the movie could just be arepresentation, both in the real world or inthe afterlife, of letting things go, of moving past the shit he used to be involved with.
Yeah, movies doing things symbolically, what a treat, hem?

You know what's funny? In the 70s the audiences wouldn't even question the significance of the Driver's dropping the money an walk away without it. It would go without saying. I think it says quite a lot about audiences and the people of today that such a gesture from the Driver's character would be something to ruin the movie for them.

Yeah, people tend to want the predictable happy ending. I think many hated No Country For Old Men for the same reason. I like this ending. There is a reason behind hid actions. It simply isn't explained to the audience and they are left to their own interpretation. Characters like this tend to have a very strong personal code...it tends to help them live with themselves and their actions, some of which can be quite dark.

I only come here for the talkback comments, Harry rendered himself completely irrelevant years ago ("koff"Godzilla"koff").
So he can pirate all he wants, push crap movies for which he received trinkets, mangle the English language all he wants and drop names like a bomber over Dresden...HE IS IRRELEVANT.
Is anyone coming to this site and finding news they didn't find sooner somewhere else? How many new bits are there that aren't just old interviews dredged up from Comic Con? Gawd I love Community but are we going to get the whole cast spread throughout the rest of the year?

Some of the undiluted praise here bugs me.
“Drive is a masterpiece of surface over depth. Catnip for anyone who thinks cinema is for the eye rather than the brain or heart.” The Daily Telegraph. And never was a truer word written. It seems that people have fallen over each other to praise how hip this film is and not really worried to much about its narrative coherence. The driver's psychological motivations are so vague that it is laughable to call them characterisation. This was, for stretches, just a game of Grand Theft Auto made into a movie. Don’t get me wrong, it looked stunning, but when you sit it down to talk to and about it, you find that it’s all surface, no depth, no cohesion.
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian correctly states that the driver’s hip 5-minute rule “makes zero narrative sense” – I mean what’s the fucking point of a getaway driver who might possibly only get the job half done?
And Carey Mulligan’s character was supposed to be a 30-something Latino woman in the original story but her lobbying for the role convinced Refn that changes, for the sake of it, should be made. That shows a real commitment to narrative integrity.
“Even his clothes make scant dramatic sense. He wears a quilted silver jacket with a gold scorpion embroidered on the back, and keeps on wearing it when the fabric is smeared with gore, but why would a man so clearly defined elsewhere by the spirit of self-effacement take such a risk?” The New Yorker. Exactly, this man is so fucking meticulous that he cleans engine parts with a toothbrush, has a prohibitive driving rule, but will happily wander around covered in blood. Riiiiiiight. But it’s the scorpion you cry, it’s symbolic. Maybe, but it makes zero fucking sense character-wise.
“The mayhem here so clashes with the high style and traditionalism of the rest of the film that when the bloodletting goes into overdrive, so to speak, it throws you out of the picture, diluting the mood rather than enhancing it.” Kenneth Turan. Like I said, pandering to the GTA crowd really costs this film in places. Furthermore, as Turan states: “whatever this film's strengths, psychological motivation is not one of them” because there is absolutely no reason hinted at as to why the driver would want to father the young boy. A sudden need to seek redemption? Why? The driver is such an emotional zero that any reason could be projected onto him, but that is, again, just convenient (or lazy) storytelling.
This is a cool-looking film. It’s just not a very coherent one.

Some have even called him autistic. I wouldn't go that far, but I think he definitely suffers from a couple personality disorders. Antisocial and schizoid personality disorder, to be specific. People keep questioning why didn't he act in a rational manner...as if someone who murders people has the capacity to be rational. Look at hid face after he (spoilers) stomps that dude's head in the elevator. He clearly loses his shit. You see that for all his calm and cool for most of the film, underneath, and in his mind, something's not right. Carey Mulligan sees it at that moment, too.

"what’s the fucking point of a getaway driver who might possibly only get the job half done?"
How about not getting caught and thrown to fucking jail as a motivation, hem? The most vulnerable part of the getaway driver is when he is seated on his ass waiting for the robers to come out. He's a dead sitting duck while it lasts. So, the five minutes waiting thing makes perfect sense. He's looking out for his own ass, as he would in his position.
People have to actually think about their opinions before they voice themn, you know? And Peter Bradshaw is a fucking tool!

Again, another good analisis. As you very well said, what might look quaint for a normal person might make perfect sense of such an extreme person as the driver, and how he can find his own piece of mind that allows him to sleep at nighit. Again, another great point you made. You rule this talkback.

I'm torn on this movie. I've only seen it once, and I'd like to give it another shot before I render judgement.
My immediate reaction was that it was very very good, but lacking in some way and I really couldn't put my finger on why. My subsequent opinion was that Refn pulled off 80% a masterpiece but left some things hanging, but I still couldn't figure out what.
Reading some of these talkbacks, I think I may have a theory. I think some of it is the awkward pacing. I'm all for long silences in films if they serve some sort of narrative or character purpose. In There Will Be Blood it was the bleakness of the harsh landscape mirroring the bleak, harsh landscape of Plainview that earned it those long silences, and the very first things you see him doing in the film BACK THAT STYLE CHOICE UP.
But Gosling's Driver character does not earn those silences. The movie immediately puts him in a situation we've seen a million times, a getaway driver, and nothing happens during that getaway drive that hasn't happened in a million other movies; he's a great driver, he escapes. Next, when he meets the girl, we still know nothing about him other than the previous crime cliche, so nothing has been earned. It's not like Plainview falling, breaking his leg, and only caring about his treasure and then dragging himself across the jagged, rocky ground miles and miles to get back to civilization. That immediately sets his character up and earns the bleakness of those long silences, setting the mood right off the bat, from ACTION, not just style choice without motivation. That's just an example of earning your style choices. You can't just present a style immediately and justify it with its own existence, something else has to birth it.
This is my main problem with Drive, is that Refn assumes many things without necessarily earning the audience's trust first. Like Tarantino says, he doesn't mind being lost or confused by choices in a film, as long as he feels he's in good hands. I didn't feel that way in Driver at the beginning, because like I said, the style choices were simply JUST THERE without being earned. Look at Pulp Fiction. Tarantino immediately sets his characters up as another cliche; low time petty criminal couple. Except they don't talk or act like the ones we've seen before. THIS immediately separates them from other characters in those kinds of movies and earns the style choice of incessant dialogue driving the narrative forward rather than direct action. Notice the FREEZE FRAME QT uses when Honey Bunny says "...kill every motherfucking last one of you"....that is a style choice that in any other movie would be immediately out of place because it hadn't been earned. Sort of style for styles sake. But Pumpkin and Honey Bunny are already so far different that the freeze frame immediately sets them up as iconsm, frozen in time. Like on a magazine cover...hence, Pulp Fiction. It's a brilliant sequence for more reasons than I was able to list.
My problem with Drive is, Refn does little to properly set up Driver...he's an enigma simply because he rarely talks. But that's kind of cheating. He should be an enigma because of his choices. But he does nothing out of the oridnary from your average getaway driver in the first act. He doesn't talk much, but he doesn't really interact with anybody enough to glean why he doesn't talk and you never really figure this out. It's just sort of ambigously laid out there.
And the the girl and the kid. He just sort of assumes the role of protector and we don't understand why. This guy has been set up as a loner, and suddenly he assumes the role of surrogate dad/boyfriend? Again, nothing has been setup to earn this. They never even have a proper date so we can find out why he's doing this. He just sort of floats through the film as a psychotic mute. And this is mainly what keeps me from loving Drive. It's a frustrating film because all Refn had to do was make a few minor adjustments and he would have had a masterpiece. But he's playing a dangerous game, he's assuming stylistic choices without earning them. Even the 80s pop, day-glo asthetic makes little sense. In an interview at comic-con Refn said he spontaneously got the main idea behind Drive while Gosling was driving him home, something about "he's a guy who drives around alone at night listening to pop music to deal with his emotions"...ok fine, except we almost never see Driver do this in the film. I counted maybe once where I saw him cruised the streets alone at night listening to a pop song. It sounded like Refn was about to pull a Taxi Driver. Scorsese's Bikcle character is much like the Refn wanted Driver to be...Bickle cruises the streets at night, watching people, events, his mind turning over...it's an obvious set of sequences. I think it would have been VERY interesting if Driver actually had an internal monlogue to juxtapose his painful silences so we could gleam some more from his character. The problem is Driver is a mute and basically does nothing to differentiate himself from almost every other getaway, violent driver in other films...so we never learn much about him. The painful silence even extend to Mulligan's character. She also seems a bit awkward, but we never find out why.
These are just my feelings, unfiltered thoughts on how I feel about the movie. I appreicate some people are over the moon for the flick, but to me Refn missed the mark.

Excellent points. I can accept Bobo's explaination. In fact, will watch the film again and see if it plays better.
Asimov raises some good points about it being blood money and not wanting it to "follow" him forever.
Still, if I had that dough near me, gone baby gone it would be!

Oct. 15, 2011, 2:02 p.m. CST

by ZodNotGod

Thanks for the debates, guys! It's nice to talk about actual movies, interpretations, etc. on this site instead of suffering through the one-note douchers who scream LUCA$ SUCKS in every tb.

Ultimately my gripe is with some style choices. The dumb silences, the staring, the wasteful time killers. The odd music. Edit this crap out and we could have a minor classic.
Maybe those geeks at fanedit.org could do it. Climb off beating the dead horse of Star Wars for while.

Why didn't the Driver have a backstory? A flashback montage, giving us a hint...why does he break the law? Does he need the money? for Kicks? Is he addicted to drugs paying off a debt? Is his gay lover forcing him to do it????
Give him something to do...I'd think as an actor just being a zombie would be boring, (just ask Travolta!).
A few lines with his woman or kid would have cleared things up.

This post has devolved into an actual respectable debate about the movie! I sincerely thank you all for the good reading. THIS is what makes the site worth visiting.
Like it or not, there must be something to this movie to get so many talking. This is called ACTUAL buzz, as opposed to a sort of "fabricated" buzz generated by Super 8. The little engine who could versus the locomotive who was supposed to.

(Beware of spoilers, they'll be throughout this post... although, this TB seems to be made up of people who have already seen the film.)
I think it is irrelevant to ask why he didn't take the money at the end. The Driver is, apparently, one of the more respected stunt drivers in the film business. He's got the natural ability to be a Sprint Cup-level racecar driver. He's a skilled mechanic that works 12-hour days for less than minimum wage. And yet he still risks his ass night-in and night-out as a getaway driver for criminals he doesn't even know. He could've followed any one of those particular avenues to financial success and emotional gratification. Instead he dabbles in each, living a fragmented life instead of that of a 'whole' person. Why?
There doesn't seem to be a REASON why. And I'm perfectly fine with that. Not every protagonist should have his motivations and inner quibbles spelled out through 3 acts. The Driver kind of reminds me of the Joker's line in The Dark Knight, "he just... DOES things." And that type of impulsive, unmotivated and unreasoned behavior is a very common trait of people with severe personality disorders.
I think Carey Mulligan struck him as his last opportunity to change his life, to live something meaningful, to glue those fragments together and become a 'complete' human being. Refn wisely focuses very heavily and over-exposes the romantic escapades, drowning them in dream-like lighting and romantic 80s-like pop music; the longing looks at each other; the caring moments spent between the Driver and Mulligan's son. It represents a chance for optimism for the Driver, a chance for meaning after simply drifting through his entire life.
That is why I find the elevator scene so impactful. Its played in slow motion, and the lighting dramatically shifts to highlight only Mulligan and Gosling in their last intimate moment together, that last "couple" moment before the Driver finally reverts back to his old ways and stomps the living shit out of a man's head. And thats the end of his chance with Mulligan. The end of any semblance of a "normal" life.
After that point, he just doesn't give a shit. Every dark and sociopathic part of his psyche manifests and takes over, all at once, and he simply "checks out." Drowns Perlman, taunts and then kills Brooks, and then leaves the money and books it out of town. Because, in my opinion, he is completely gone at that point. Any human being left in him died in that elevator.
Its a fucking badass ending, in my opinion. It may not be satisfying in the way of typical Hollywood tropes. But the Driver is not a typical hollywood protagonist... he's a sociopath. He was never going to "get the girl." His lifestyle choices and manic personality were destined to leave him in a pool of blood and social disconnect.

Again, I think anything at that point of the movie is really just irrelevant, it is just the aftermath. I saw him not taking the money as some mentioned above, that the driver didn't care about some dirty blood money, what he cared about was taken care of and complete. Which, as one of the songs in the movie suggests, means he is a real human being and a real hero. Either way, if he took the money and had a detailed, violent knife fight, it would be forgettable because there wouldn't be much to make it unique. The fact that Refn chose the shadows and to leave the money on the pavement is more memorable, whether you thought it was a positive or a negative choice, because we are still talking about the ending.

Gosling's character knows that he doesn't have the internal stability to have a wife and kid, which is why he envies the Spanish dude, but doesn't try to replace him after he's dead...because he knows he can't. You look at him, and you see a good-looking guy who drives fast cars and likes kids and is chivalrous, and you think 'Why doesn't this guy have a girl?'...and clearly, there's a darkness in him, and an inability to function as a normal person would. <p>
Remember the scene where he offers the kid a toothpick? The audience laughed both times I've watched the movie, and there's a kind of innocent sweetness to it, because you can tell the kid looks up to him and will probably start chewing on toothpicks like him, but to me, it shows that interacting with kids is new to him, even though he likes kids. Even those staring contests he has with the kid...he has taken something that adults would find creepy and weird if he did it with them (and you see he does it a lot) but he turns it into a game with the kid because he doesn't know how else to relate to him. Even when he asks the kid which guys are the bad guy when watching the shark cartoon, he seems like he genuinely does not know. "Are there any good sharks?". To me he's thinking about himself, because in his mind, he knows he's similar to the shark. <p>
His interactions with the woman and her kid are sweet and unrequited, yet he knows if he were to take it further, it would eventually fall apart when they see how he really is. He would rather they cherish his memory as a hero as he uses his skills for crime and murder to help someone for once...and that's why leaving the money is worth much, much more to him. His actions were pure and were done for good and not money this time...and he wants to be able to cherish that, and keep that purity within his mind and heart.

was a sociopath in my opinion my friends thought he was some sort of retard who was afaird talk,we all agreed that Ryan Gosling was trying too hard and it came across like an exercise in style,but it has great things going for it....the opening scene was brilliant in the car,the supporting cast are remakable loved ron pearlman but i think its certainly going to divide people it just proves ya need to have no expections going into the cinema

You are turning into quite the scholar of DRIVE. Just like i am a bit of that for VALHALLA RISING. Did i ever told you how much i love VALHALLA RISING? Just in case the first 500 times were not enough to drive the point home (pun intended).
Christopher Nolan and Ridley Scott better watch out, because this Nicolas Winding Refn guy is in danger of becoming my favorite director.
To think that Refn will make a remake of LOGAN'S RUN that will be closer to the original book, and that Gosling might play the lead is just blowing my mind! Wow!!

Looks like we pretty much agree on drive. I saw your post after I wrote mine which pretty much reinforced your views.
And asimovlives, thanks for the compliment earlier and taking the time to check out my pov on the end. This talkback has become a nice discussion on Drive.

about leaving the money at the end, as Assifag would lead you to believe. He sat there in his car and thought long and hard about it, because damn straight he wanted that fuckin money, he's a criminal and is motivated by the pay-off. Sure he likes to drive cars and that gets his rocks off too but ultimately everyone loves a giant sack of cash. So assifag is pretty stupid to make that assessment. The truth of the matter is, the money is tied to the Mob and he doesn't want to die. He is also tied to the mob and that's why he ditches the woman as well, although that's definitely not the route I would take, and it makes for a downer ending to the film as well. I can live with leaving the cash there but ditching the woman makes no fucking sense. It makes the entire movie completely pointless if you ask me. All those stupid 10 minute scenes in the grocery store gazing longingly at each other for what? The ending SUCKS!

Fucking loved it. Best movie I've seen in theatres in a long time. The only other Refn I've seen is VALHALLA RISING and I fucking loved that too.
As someone above said, Driver leaves the money because it's blood money and his only real relationship is with himself. The girl was disgusted by the money and so he can't stomach taking it. He'll do lots more jobs.
Also agree with the person who said audiences in the 70s would have found the motivation obvious, or at least not objected to it.
Loved the shot at the end of Gosling's face where you think he might be dead.
The driver character is interesting for being so vague and free of background. Sometimes I really don't give a shit about the motivation behind the motivation, or how a guy relates to his dad.

Asimovlives is not stupid for making that assessment because this is open to interpretation. You say that he sat there thinking long and hard about the money but is not the point some of us are making at all. The money is not a factor to him. At all. He had plenty more to be thinking long and hard about. The movie even makes a point to mention he is not motivated by money when Cranston tells Mulligan that driver was underpaid as a mechanic and never cared. So if he wasn't worried about his hourly wage I'm sure money wasn't at the top of his list of things to think about while sitting in a car with a stab wound. Also, the money being tied to the mob isn't a factor at that point anymore either. Albert Brooks tells him straight up that he has knocked off anyone else that knew anything about the money situation, and considering he won the knife fight with Brooks, he is a ghost to the mob and the money was his if he wanted it but he just didn't. One could also argue that he was driving toward the girl at the end because the coast was clear and they showed her looking for him and knocking on his door.
But either way, damn dude, it's all open to interpretation, no need to get all butthurt on us.

Jesus H. Christ, of COURSE it makes sense. It's called a contract. I'll deliver X if you deliver Y. The Driver knows what the realistic window of escaping pursuit and capture is. That's why he's still alive and out of jail. Pay me the money, and so long as you're in my car by the time I say, I will keep you (us, in fact) from being caught. Take longer than that, and you're on your own.
If you're an independent businessman and have no idea how to create a contract between yourself and a client, you'll be toast within a few months. Doubly so in the world of professional crime, one would assume.

'You guys say this movie is great, yet everyone I know who watched it was bored.'
The average critic will have an above-average IQ and level of education. This is clearly not true of the average cinemagoer.
Lots of people are fucking stupid. This movie is not for people who are fucking stupid. Indeed, it probably serves as a fairly effective litmus test.
Actually, I guess 'stupid' is a bit harsh. Impatient, unable to concentrate, possibly inexperienced.
Nah, fuck it, stupid.

i think this is probably the best film I've seen this year, so I've thought about it a lot. I've seen it twice and will probably see it again. I haven't seen Valhalla Rises yet but I'll probably check it out along with the Pusher series very soon.

But that's because you made your movie watchign dietry made of Michael Pussy Faggots Piece Of Shit Bay and Jar Jar Abrams movie. Of cours,e a movie liek DRIVE would go over your head. It takes training and respect for intelligence and art to aprpeciate a movie like DRIVE. You can't get that from watching the tripe that Bay and Abrams do. So, don't blame others for your own limitations, friend.
And show some fucking respect. We are discussing ideas in here. If you want to go personal, go fuck yourself and do it alone in front of a mirror.

now, there is soemthigni want to warn you about going to Refn's back cathaloge.
You see, you cna divide Refn's career into two eras: Pre-Bronson and post-Bronson, with Bronson being the dividing line.
Pre-Bronson is the Pusher movies and all is other ones. Those movies were more documentary style. Handheld, shot on the fly, gritty realism.
Bronson started a change in Refn's style. He became more stylistic. He became more visually oriented. He became more experimental. He became more Kubrickian, if you will.
In fact, BRONSON can be seen as if CLOCKWORK ORANGE had a son. The influences are so obvious and direct it even became a style on it's own.
VALHALLA RISING is Refn's 2001: A SPACE ODDYSSEY. And according to Refn, quite literally. Refn's attitude toward that mvoie was as if he made a space SF movie without space and spaceships. If you watch the movie, you will understand why Refn said such a thing. But even if he didn't, you would know anyway.
VALHALLA RISING, said Refn in it's audio comentary, is the begining of his new career as a filmmaker. It's form that movie where his style for DRIVE comes from. DRIVE is pratically Refn putting to use inthe crime world the style he perfected in VALHALLA RISING.
I can't tell you for sure if you will like VALHALLA RISING. Probably you will, due to your enjoyment of DRIVE. But rest acssured, VALHALLA RISING is, despiste it's heavy influence on Kubrick and 2001, it's very much it's own movie. It's more pure.
Truly, VALHALLA RISING is one of those mvoies that dares you to like it. It doesn't make it easy for you. It's a take it or leave it deal. and for that, is one of the reasons why i love it so much. I love when a movie has such a punk-ass attitude. And the fact it's so very fucking good.

More of a quibble really. A pacing issue, about the disjointed flow of the final section.
The final third/quarter of the movie just seemed to
feel slightly disconnected. Each scene perfectly handled but very much a separate entity from the scene preceding or following it.
Not sure if I'll feel differently on second viewing, or if it won't matter then, but I just felt I was being pulled out of the movie and thrown back in again. Like watching a series of five minute episodes, or a Jim Jarmusch movie from the 80s.
Only seen the film once (and loved everything else about it), so can't tell if it was intentional (some kind of metaphor for disconnected Los Angelonos) or just the mood I was in at the time.

Fear X basically bankrupted him so he was forced to sequelise Pusher for (at first) purely monetary reasons.
It's interesting for a some main points.
I think the failure of Fear X made him a better film-maker. He admits on that movie's DVD commentary that he didn't know what the movie was about, so as well made as it is on a technical level, that lack of cohesive focus will mean it is always going to be flawed. Love or hate his movies since, they have a very definite focus and style to them. Fear X is the work of a "young" film-maker more interested in the toys he's been given (such as using Kubrick's cameraman and the brilliance of Turturro) than making a valid point.
He became a better human being after bankruptcy. His inbuilt arrogance took a deserved beating, and that meant he could make better movies.
He slept with a massive poster of Cannibal Holocaust above his bed. And his girlfriend didn't mind. This makes him very cool.

We can't all love the same movies and do it equally, can we?
No problem. As long one can enjoy or at least regognize a true quality movie, regardless if it will became a personal favorite, then it's all alright. It's all just a matter of respect, if you know what i mean.

I also think that Refn is a very cool guy. i think he still retains that arrogance, but instead of being personal if uses it in his movies, in his art. His movies could be called arrogant in the sense that they are their own thing and he doesn't kiss ass to the audiences. His movies ar emade to be seen, but he will put the story and ther sryle they need to be told first, ahead of artificial considerations of what audiences can like or not.
And i respect that a lot. I like that kind of arrogance in a movie. All the grrat movies i love that that kind of arogance. They ask, they demand from the audiences a participation. to be with the movie, instead of just acting like passive sheep to the slaughter. Movies that really perk a person up. i love that.
And Refn is the lastest filmmaker dude i have come to know that does that type of moviemaking. The good type of moviemaking. This guy is great. And his movies are damn good. Damn good.
And it seems that Refn is also able to learn a lesson and profit from it. Instead of pussy asses like Michael Faggot Bay who blames everybody else for his own failures and limitations. This is why Refn is a great filmmaker, and Bay isn't. Besides the fact that Refn actually has talent.
Nicolas Winding Refn, motherfuckers!

It's when they're turning out shit pretending their noses can't smell it that it grates.
Also known as The Shyamalyan Situation.
So more Drive - no more Fear X's.
And unlike a lot of others here I hope he doesn't go the franchise or blockbuster route. I know those types of movies are big paydays for their makers, but I'd prefer to see original material from Refn.
I'm not even sure how good an idea Logan's Run would be.

... actually, that's a common thing in many european or even asian movies. You will notice that many movies made outside USA, even those made exclusively and solely for the porpose of commerce and light entertaiment, have a more free strcuture then the ones made in Holywood. When a movie made outside USA has a very formal structure, that in itself is a point to the story it tells.
But usually, movies made outside USA are not all that too bothered with the usual Holywood problem of pacing or structure, if by their absense a movie can be made better or more unique. It's a different sensebily and a philosophy of filmmaking at work.

For no rational reason I don't like dissolves either.
Or generic landscape shots that always remind me of 70s cop shows after the commercial break.
I've got no problem with slower paced movies (Tinker Tailor being one of my favourite movies this year), I just found the last run of scenes in Drive strangely disconnected.
It could be that it was deliberate - reflecting the persona of The Driver as well as the LA landscape.
Or it could just be me.

I'm inclined to think it was a deliberate filmmaking choice. Refn doesn't seem to be the kind of filmmaker that would leave such things to chance.
But if you don't dig that type of filmaking, that's cool. Hell, maybe the second time you watch it you will like it better, with hindsight. Or maybe not. No matter. You still dig the movie, and i couldn't ask more of you.

I'm sorry - if you sign up to take part in a robbery you sign up to see it through, you don't say: "Yeah, I'll be there, but only for five minutes then I will simply leave you in a multi-storey car park."
There is no way in heaven or hell he would get work if he had a reputation for dumping clients, that is the antithesis of a getaway. The clue's in the word, surely. They should get away, not just from the scene of the crime but with the crime too, in a sense.
I mean, really -
Driver: "Hi, I'll be your getaway driver but technically, I won't get you away, but I will do my best to get you 5 minutes away."
Criminal: "Wow, really? How big of you. Ummm...We'll book a taxi instead. At least they drive to a set destination."

First off, spot-on assessment of Refn.
Second, (might as well hop in on this) I always saw him leaving the money as both a moral and logic-based decision. Yes, taking it could very easily get him killed, as well as Carey Mulligan's character. On a more personal level though, this money is ultimately what lead to Bryan Cranston's character's death (I feel really dumb right now because I cannot remember anybody's name in this movie). He seemed to be Driver's only friend and now he's gone because of this money. Seems like his motivations would stem from both of these issues.

The post-good-movie buzz is the reason I got addicted to movies in the early 90s. When you see one that really works for you, it fills the free corners of your head with something fun to think about afterwards. It's like the opposite of an alcohol addiction.
I'm kinda glad I saw it with an audience and didn't wait for Blu-ray. Everyone was certainly well-behaved and properly focussed on the film. I saw it by myself and have to admit it was kinda sad to see everyone else with a date. Not that I can't get a date. I kinda relate to the Driver character that way...
And yeah on further thinking last night while I couldn't sleep... he probaby didn't even think about taking the money. He didn't even consider it.
I watched Thief a couple times like 13 years ago. Good movie. Collateral is a lot fresher in my mind, and I saw a lot of the stuff I loved in Collatera sort of filtered and combined with some fresh elements in Drive to produce something original and just as cool. That said (Harry, you're rubbing off on me), I would double-bill it with To Live and Die in LA (best car chase in cinema if you ask me... also set among sociopaths in LA).
On the way home I hit Best Buy and double-dipped on blu-rays of the two AVP movies ($12 for both discs together!) and Batman Forever ($9.99). Lately I can't stop doing this, buying old movies that aren't all that great but if I can get them for less than $10 on blu-ray I will. Anyhow, I have a real weakness for Batman Forever and threw it in with dinner. Damned if I didn't watch the whole thing. That movie, stupid as it is, really entertains me.

Not remembering the character's name in DRIVE... hell, did anybody had a name in that movie, anyway?
Good to see another fan of Refn. This guy will go places. And if Holywood doesn't work out for him, who cares? He made BRONSON and VALHALLA RISING, and the wghole of his career outside Holywood so far, it's not like he's dependent on that for a career. He could even continue in the american independent scene, which DRIVE is from. It's Holywood that stands to lose by not embracing him, not him.

It all depends on how good the Driver is at his job. and as the movie proves, he's excidling good at his job. This means, he can shove his impositions all he cares, because o far they have prevented him and his clientelle to be caught. That alone more then justifies anybody agreeing with his terms and ocnditions. You agree with his conditions, you are garanteee you get scott free. So no, wikth him,anybody who would break their contract would be the fools, and nobody else woudl think ill of Driver, because they know he delivers the goods.
Also, in case you forgot, we meet Driver at the peak of his criminal career. He's a legend already. He's not a nobody. He has clouth, he has weight, he has a name and a reputation beyond dispute. That is his power. All others either take it or leave it.

I don't know to what extent you know all the busiensa bout LOGAN'S RUN. If your knowledge is just limited to the 1970s movie with Michael York, then let me say that the movie barely represents what's in the original novel. The original novel is far more gritty and violent and cynical. Desperate even.
If the idea is to make a new LOGAN'S RUN movie closer to the original book, then Refn is more then ideal to direct such a movie. The whole business, then hangs on notion if th3 new movie is a remake of the older movie (a direct adaptation of what was in that movie) or a direct new adaptation of the book. And from what few things Refn has said about it, it seems he's headind for the second option.
As such, i cannot help but receive the news of Refn making a Logan's Run movie with excitement and optimism. Few directors seem right for it, and Refn is one of them.

And most of my knowledge of it does stem from nostalgic memories of the movie and short lived tv series.
It's been one of those remake ideas that seems to have been bandied around forever, resurfacing with new actor/director duo every few years.
Wasn't it almost a go with Christian Bale and Bryan Singer once upon a time?
I'd just rather Refn was working on a lower budget with full creative control than getting his work destroyed by studio rewrites, reshoots and general fucking around that a bigger budget sf movie like that would doubtless entail.
If Drive had been a bigger commercial hit then Refn may have more clout, but I don't like the idea of him being "gun-for-hire". Granted that can turn out bloody well - I think Vaughn and Branagh both did surprisingly well with their superhero franchises this year, but there's also something beautiful about a maverick, independent film-maker remaining just that.

Refn is not aversed to the ideaof being hired to make a blockbuster. He says so in the VALHALLA RISING comentary. I think that he wants the experience, he wants to know how it is, how it plays. He's curious about it.
Of course, Refn has such a strong personality and such a strong personal style, something of his would come out in the film.
Consider the case of Christopher Nolan and the Batman movies. Look at what he has achieve,d and he has mannaged to put so much of his own personla style even in the first movie, where he had the least clouth and power. He just mananged to convince ethe powers up he could do the job.
Tarantino inthe audio comentaty in TRUE ROMANCE tells that one of the first things he noticed when hestarted working in holywood is that the vast majority of studio executives are pretty clueless about movies. He also noticed that if you speak to a room of executives and you talk with conviction and look like you know what you are doing and how to pull a movie, the studio executives can't help but go with what you say. Because they don't know. However little a filmmaker might know, a studio exec knows even less.
Which explains why certain clueless hack fucks like Bay and Marcus Niespel have carrers. They just shout a room full of execs into submission.
This is where arrogance is a necessary trait for a filmmaker, specially a talented one. Arrogance on it'«s own,and if taken too far, makes you become a Troy Duffy. But judicially used,and with the talent to back it up, you became a Christopher Nolan. All great filmamkers are arrogant to some point. They need to be. In Holywood, it's a survival trait.

It's not making TRANSFORMERS box office results, but for a little cheap independent move, it more then made it's budget back twice, and more importantly, it's talked about. As much we geeks are talking about the movie, so are everybody in Hoylwood.
Believe it or not, it's not just fat bucks that impresses Holywood, but talent as well. And Holywood is always a sucker for a new hot things. Refn is a new hot thing.
Holywood actually respects talent. This is why Ridley Scott was still able to have a career even though for most of the 80s and 90s his movies either flopped or underformed (BLACK RAIN and THELMA AND LOUISE the exceptions). But he was imensely respect for his talent at filmmaking, so he still kept getting jobs, even high profile jobs, even with his a commercial clouth dammage.
There'sa urban legend that it was HEASVEN'S GATE that killed both UNITED ARTISTS and Michael Cimino's career. Not true. In fact, the colgomorate that owned United Artists got back the movie's budget in two days of trading stocks. Cimino keep making movies in the 80s, noneof them cheappies, for Dino DeLaurenttis. What killed his career was his egomania and his bridge burning personality. Same with William Friedkin.
Holywood respects talent. It doesn't always trreat it well, but talent is a commodity. Holywood also doesn't like untalented ass-fucks like Bay. The reason Bay still has a career is that his movies keep being profitable. If Bay had a bad run of flops, his ass would be so burned Holywood wouldn't even give him dog food to eat.
Holywood has this split thing about it, they love money and profit, but they love talent too. The ideal holywood scenario is to have a filmmaker who's both talented and commercially sucessful, like Nolan.

And can you say overhyped? Jesus Christ this site has a hard on for this stupid movie. I haven't watched a movie with a dumber lead character since Forrest Gump. Harry and Lloyd would have made better decisions than this idiot driver.
This movie would not amount to a pimple on the ass of Heat.

He lives a pretty simple life... He doesn't have any need for money, other than what he needs to survive and maybe supe up his car. He does jobs for fun. That is the main reason why he left the money, but also because it was tainted/trouble/blood money and everything else.

More like the movie doesn't have big ass explosions and JJ Abrams, therefore it will not be a popular subject at AICN. One or two more days and this talkback will fade away to the past.

Oct. 17, 2011, 7:10 a.m. CST

by ZodNotGod

This would actually make a fantastic tv show! One step ahead of the mob and the law. He drives from city to city doing jobs, making enough to get by. No one knows his real name, he helps people out when he can....

I would say that the reason that there is a disparity between the critics' reception of the film and that of the audience (shown on Cinemascore) is that the majority of the film-going audience are dolts. The Zookeeper made millions upon millions and had an A- rating. That is all you need to know.

It's strength is more a testament to the power of image and sound (Martinez's score) than to brilliant acting or dialogue ala Tarantino. It plays like a dream. And in the day and age of tv-movie style direction, that's a nice change.

I really thought this movie was a steaming pile of shit... from the score, which sounded like it was put together by a 80's teeny bopper. Ryan Gosling played his part like he suffers from autism, and Albert Brooks as a villain. Really? Scenes dragged on to long, it seemed like they tried to force the violence into some scenes too. What a disappointment, I still think Gosling can carry an action flick though I just hope he drops the rain man routine.

Just wanted to say I saw it last weekend and adored the EVER LIVING FUCK out of this movie.
It's not so much a silent movie as a movie that would rather SHOW you what's happening and not TELL you what's happening.
AsimovLives, if you read this 100% agree, as a child of the 70's no one would have pondered why he didn't take the money. Hell were it I in his position, and I miraculously survived as long as the driver did, I wouldn't take that money either.
That's not something that needs to happen.
Besides the fact it's all based off a wonderful book by James Sallis.
I wonder how many aintitcool types have read that hard-boiled masterpiece, or am I as the librarian present the only one?